Tuskegee experiment

The Tuskegee experiment was a 1932 Public Health Service and Tuskegee Institute experiment to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes ot justifying treatment programs for blacks. The study initially involved 600 poor African-American men - 399 had syphilis, and 201 did not, and the benefits for the experiment would be insurance. The researchers told the subjects that they were researching bad blood, and that they would be giving them drugs to help with the issue; they also gave them free medical exams. They did not let them know that they were studying to see if blacks reacted differently to discovering that they had syphilis. The government-supported study was unethical, as, even when penicillin became the drug of choice for syphilis in 1947, researchers did not offer it to the subjects, instead continuing to study them to see if there would be a different reaction. The syphilis-infected individuals grew more sick, and they transmitted the disease to their wives and children. In October 1972, the experiment was discovered by the media, and the researchers had to recognize what was going wrong and shut down the experiment, making a $10 million out-of-court settlements in 1974, including giving lifetime medical benefits and burial services to all living participants. In 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the experiment.